Abstract:
Shaykh Ādam Ibn Abdullah al-Ilūrī was one of the rare erudite scholars in the African continent in the twentieth century who contributed a lot to the development of various Islamic disciplines. The Arabic School (Markazu’t-Taclīmi’l-‘Arabī Al-Islāmī) established by him in 1952 has produced several Islamic scholars who specialised in different areas of Islamic disciplines. The objective of this study is to examine some of the neo-Ijtihād exercises of Al-Ilūrī on the jurisprudential issues surrounding the observance of Ramaḍān fasting in Nigeria such as the universal and geographical application of moon sighting, personality of the moon-sighter, number of moon-sighters, textual and artificial calculation of moon sighting, and the day of doubt (Yawm As-Sakk) which always serves as a jurisprudential controversy on the commencement and termination of Ramaḍān fasting among Nigerian Muslims. Research method used in this study is expository, descriptive, and analytical so as to come up with the relevance of Al-Ilūrī’s neo-Ijtihād legal exercise to the Nigerian environs. Conclusively, the study makes a finding that local related jurisprudential issues should be better handled by local Islamic scholars than consulting foreign materials from authors who may not be aware of the situation and circumstances peculiar to the environment. The paper therefore recommends that Nigerian Muslims should inculcate making use of the neo-Ijtihād legal exercise of their local scholars as a token of appreciation of their scholarship and a form of encouragement for them to do more in proffering solutions to some emerging problems among the Nigerian Muslims.